We left the lovely Grace Hotel fairly early in the morning, heading to the airport using the same limo service we had before. This time however, the driver was different. He hardly said a word to us on the way to the airport, in fact the more I think about it, I canâ€™t remember him saying anything at all. He also had an interesting driving style. We entertained ourselves by counting the number of red lights we zoomed past, and the number of pedestrians that fell over as they jumped back onto the sidewalk.

Once we had arrived at the airport, we left him with a nod of thanks, and entered. My lovely wife and I are both used to flying, and consider ourselves pretty experienced when it comes to security measures at airports. However, nothing had prepared us for Sydney airport.

We checked in at a console, passed in our luggage, went through security and boarded the plane without showing any photo id whatsoever.

This amazed us. In this post 9/11 world, we expected to have to go through the usual routine; showing our id at multiple points, and unpacking our handheld luggage and pockets for inspection. We did not even have to take our shoes off, never mind show any id. Even the luggage scanner was broken down, so each of our bags was being swiped with a wand whilst we were in line. I have to admit, I was a little concerned, however, I had seen an episode of â€œThe Chaserâ€™s War on Everythingâ€, where they had done the same thing with fake names. The names they had used were designed to prove a point: â€œTerry Wristâ€ and â€œAl Kyderâ€.